Family • Photo Restoration • 34 • Dusil • Inchy

• I walked to the Aldershot Animal Hospital every day after school. But one day was special. It was a fresh school year, and I had just turned eight. Michele Cieslik was working that day, and she told me that a litter of cats arrived. She asked if I wanted to play with them. Michele brought out a cage with four kittens. There were three orange and white males and one female. The kittens crawled all over each other, crying with a high pitched meow. I took one out. Then another. Then another. I didn’t want to take them out at once for fear of mayhem. Then I noticed that the female was smaller than the rest. She was tricolored – white, orange and black. Her coat was more oily that her brothers. She also seemed weaker as they trampled all over her. I took her out. She clung to me with dear life, and started to crawl up my arm, then across my shoulder. Maybe it was because I was bullied at school, and needing to protect the weakest one. But I felt an immediately connection. The funny thing is that I realized she wasn’t weak at all. She was feisty to where I felt she was compelling me to take her away from these bullies. She had a will to survive. After about a half an hour I put the kittens back in their cage, and brought them all inside. I showed Michele the tiny female kitten I fell in love with. She said I could have her if I wanted, and her name was “Inchy” – appropriate because of how tiny she was. When I got home my mom told me that someone left those kittens at the front door of the animal hospital that morning in a cardboard box.

• It was clear from the onset that our much larger alpha-male cat Puci, was the leader – rarely did Inchy challenge that. For years I had to feed her in the closet of my bedroom. Puci was so dominant he would often eat all his food and hers as well. Many times I had to scare Puci away so he wouldn’t steal Inchy’s food. Even still she remained very thin throughout her life. As small as she was, she wasn’t sick once, in her whole life.

• There were many evenings when I realized that Inchy wasn’t inside the house. So I would opened the kitchen door and call out to her. Usually within a few minutes she would come running into the house. In the winter I was most concerned. I never wanted her to sleep outside in the cold. Usually she came home, but there were a few nights that I would call her for what seemed like countless minutes. But she wouldn’t come home. Those nights my compassion overshadowed my realization that she was versed at taking care of herself. I tried to comfort myself hoping she had a warm and safe place to sleep.

• Postscript by Gabriel Dusil • 2015 April • This was our daily routine throughout my university years. I was studying and working on labs and reports on my IBM PS2, and Inchy cuddled with me everyday day.

• Postscript by Gabriel Dusil • 2015 April • If I wasn’t in front of the computer, I was in the library studying. Inchy was particularly good in helping me with special relativity, but she didn’t quite have a grasp of thermodynamics. In any case we were a great study team.